mojo-chan wrote:How this slipped past quality control to make it in to the release version is beyond me.

Did you report the need for this feature to Bugzilla prior to the final release?

No, because it wasn't in the release candidate I tested. Also, since I'm not really in to testing out RCs I only installed it on one machine and didn't do extensive testing on it.

Besides, this is a regression, not an improvement. The old behaviour was the correct one, the new behaviour breaks the tab model both as a stand alone feature and as a replacement for multiple windows. Clicking on a link outside the current tab is _never_ an indication from the user that they want to navigate away from the page in that tab. Perhaps the only exception is when Javascript in a pop-up window affects the parent (e.g. refresh after logging in), but that's a parent-child relationship and the only one I can think of.

Frankly, you don't expect major features and long standing behaviour that is the default not only for every other browser but for 99% of apps that support multiple documents in a single interface to suddenly go away with no explanation and between release candidates which as supposed to be static in terms of features.

Go to about:config and create browser.link.open_external as an integer value, set it to 3. The set browser.link.open_newwindow to 1. External links now open in a new tab, internal links open in the same tab.

Unfortunately, this fix is not compatible with Tabs Open Relative, so it's still not right.

The above "fix" just forced external hyperlinks to open in separate windows after I installed. After a few clicks from an Outlook email, I had several Firefox windows open, which is probably worse than continually overwriting the active tab.

But this should NOT have to be fixed by an external plugin, it's something wrong with Firefox 3.5 & 3.5.1 and Mozilla central should fix it asap. Roll on 3.5.2. Meanwhile I'm going to roll back to 3.0.12.

omg. I can't believe they removed functionality to treat internal & external links differently. The reply to "just install tab mix plus" is a slap in the face. In any event, I went to download the plugin to continue my normal browsing habits, and see that it's not even updated to work on v3.5... grrr

I've always been an advocate of Firefox saying the developers focus on making it quick, secure, and customizable. But after reading the comments of the bug, & seeing the defiance of not altering course after it was apparent many users would be upset after it was completed has seriously disheartened me. It's not like it was a refusal to add a feature because it was time-consuming and/or affected few users, it was removing a feature b/c it contradicted a personal philosophy on how single window browsing should be treated.

I'm hoping the attachment to the bug provides a temporary relief while I ponder on the decision to downgrade or move to chrome.

Tabs Open Relative: That extension seems so be using the fifth wrong reason to use eval. I don't know if that is the cause, but someone could give it a try.

New windows instead of tabs: I have no idea why this would happen. Could you try to set browser.link.open_newwindow to 3 also and check that it opens target=_blank in tabs and not windows? Otherwise could you try to edit the extension adding a line of alert(arguments[2]); after the line, which assigns to arguments[2] and see if it alerts 3 or not?